"That riz him clean out of his chair," said David. "'She can't prove it,' he says, shakin' his fist in the air.
"'Oh, ho! ho!' I says, tippin' my chair back agin the wall. 'If Mis' Cullom was to swear how an' where she paid you the money, givin' chapter an' verse, and showin' her own mem'randums even, an' I was to swear that when I twitted you with gittin' it you didn't deny it, but only said that she couldn't prove it, how long do you think it 'ould take a Freeland County jury to find agin ye? I allow, 'Zeke Swinney,' I says, 'that you wa'n't born yestyd'y, but you ain't so old as you look, not by a dum sight!' an' then how I did laugh!
"Wa'al," said David, as he got down off the stool and stretched himself, yawning, "I guess I've yarned it enough fer one day. Don't fergit to send Mis' Cullom that notice, an' make it up an' up. I'm goin' to git the thing off my mind this trip."
"Very well, sir," said John, "but let me ask, did Swinney assign the mortgage without any trouble?"
"O Lord! yes," was the reply. "The' wa'n't nothin' else fer him to do. I had another twist on him that I hain't mentioned. But he put up a great show of doin' it to obleege me. Wa'al, I thanked him an' so on, an' when we'd got through I ast him if he wouldn't step over to the 'Eagil' an' take somethin', an' he looked kind o' shocked an' said he never drinked nothin'. It was 'gin his princ'ples, he said. Ho, ho, ho, ho! Scat my ----! Princ'ples!" and John heard him chuckling to himself all the way out of the office.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Considering John's relations with David Harum, it was natural that he should wish to think as well of him as possible, and he had not (or thought he had not) allowed his mind to be influenced by the disparaging remarks and insinuations which had been made to him, or in his presence, concerning his employer. He had made up his mind to form his opinion upon his own experience with the man, and so far it had not only been pleasant but favorable, and far from justifying the half-jeering, half-malicious talk that had come to his ears. It had been made manifest to him, it was true, that David was capable of a sharp bargain in certain lines, but it seemed to him that it was more for the pleasure of matching his wits against another's than for any gain involved. Mr. Harum was an experienced and expert horseman, who delighted above all things in dealing in and trading horses, and John soon discovered that, in that community at least, to get the best of a "hoss-trade" by almost any means was considered a venial sin, if a sin at all, and the standards of ordinary business probity were not expected to govern those transactions.
David had said to him once when he suspected that John's ideas might have sustained something of a shock, "A hoss-trade ain't like anythin' else. A feller may be straighter 'n a string in ev'rythin' else, an' never tell the truth—that is, the hull truth—about a hoss. I trade hosses with hoss-traders. They all think they know as much as I do, an' I dunno but what they do. They hain't learnt no diff'rent anyway, an' they've had chances enough. If a feller come to me that didn't think he knowed anythin' about a hoss, an' wanted to buy on the square, he'd git, fur's I knew, square treatment. At any rate I'd tell him all 't I knew. But when one o' them smart Alecks comes along and cal'lates to do up old Dave, why he's got to take his chances, that's all. An' mind ye," asserted David, shaking his forefinger impressively, "it ain't only them fellers. I've ben wuss stuck two three time by church members in good standin' than anybody I ever dealed with. Take old Deakin Perkins. He's a terrible feller fer church bus'nis; c'n pray an' psalm-sing to beat the Jews, an' in spiritual matters c'n read his title clear the hull time, but when it comes to hoss-tradin' you got to git up very early in the mornin' or he'll skin the eyeteeth out of ye. Yes, sir! Scat my ----! I believe the old critter makes hosses! But the deakin," added David, "he, he, he, he! the deakin hain't hardly spoke to me fer some consid'able time, the deakin hain't. He, he, he!
"Another thing," he went on, "the' ain't no gamble like a hoss. You may think you know him through an' through, an' fust thing you know he'll be cuttin' up a lot o' didos right out o' nothin'. It stands to reason that sometimes you let a hoss go all on the square—as you know him—an' the feller that gits him don't know how to hitch him or treat him, an' he acts like a diff'rent hoss, an' the feller allows you swindled him. You see, hosses gits used to places an' ways to a certain extent, an' when they're changed, why they're apt to act diff'rent. Hosses don't know but dreadful little, really. Talk about hoss sense—wa'al, the' ain't no such thing."